{"id":41723,"date":"2023-04-05T00:01:40","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_news&p=41723"},"modified":"2023-04-04T14:58:46","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T21:58:46","slug":"how-plastic-opens-fish-up-to-disease","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/how-plastic-opens-fish-up-to-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"How Plastic Opens Fish Up to Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microplastics wreak havoc on fish in myriad ways<\/a>, disrupting everything from eating behavior to brain development. While it\u2019s clear these pesky particles can cause animals a world of trouble, scientists have found it much harder to pin down exactly how <\/em>they cause so many problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that if you expose animals to plastics, then oftentimes we\u2019ll see pathology,\u201d says Andrew Wargo, a disease ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). \u201cBut what we don\u2019t really know are the secondary effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, however, is starting to change.<\/p>\n

In controlled laboratory experiments<\/a>, Wargo and his VIMS colleagues have shown how microplastics leave rainbow trout more vulnerable to a common salmonid disease, infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV). The effect can be dramatic: by exposing trout to a high concentration of either polystyrene beads or nylon microfibers for one month and then subjecting them to IHNV, the scientists found that fish were three to six times more likely to die, respectively, than IHNV-infected fish that hadn\u2019t been exposed to plastics.<\/p>\n

As well as increasing the lethality of IHNV, the microplastics also caused the exposed fish to have higher viral loads and shed more virus.<\/p>\n

Taking tissue samples from the fish at different points in the experiment, the scientists found that the plastics were damaging the fish\u2019s gills and provoking an inflammatory response. This likely makes it easier for the virus to invade the fish\u2019s body, leading to more severe disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this kind of priming happening with some plastics,\u201d says Meredith Evans Seeley, an environmental chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the study\u2019s lead author. \u201cThat allows the pathogens to be more successful at colonizing the host.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstanding the mechanism of how microplastics can increase the virulence of a virus? That\u2019s pretty new,\u201d says Bettie Cormier, an aquatic ecotoxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who was not involved in the work.<\/p>\n

The deadly synergy between microplastics and viruses could be especially troubling in aquaculture operations, Wargo says. Infections spread easily on fish farms, and farmed fish frequently encounter plastics such as nylon and polystyrene, which are used for buoys and nets.<\/p>\n

Wild fish encounter microplastics and viruses, too, Cormier adds, so similar interactions between microplastics and pathogens could be having ecosystem-level effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlastics and pathogens are everywhere,\u201d Wargo says. \u201cI think if we want to understand the effects of both, we probably need to consider them together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microplastics wreak havoc on fish in myriad ways, disrupting everything from eating behavior to brain development. While it\u2019s clear these pesky particles can cause animals a world of trouble, scientists have found it much harder to pin down exactly how <\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":41725,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Higher death rates, bigger viral loads, and more viral shedding\u2014plastic causes big problems for rainbow trout trying to fend off a common disease.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[41729]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":null,"related":[32453,39546],"twitterimage":41726,"facebookimage":41724,"twitterdescription":"","edited":[15491],"factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41733,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41723\/revisions\/41733"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/15491"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39546"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}